


The Great Puzzle

by Fyre



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Insanity, Multi, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-09
Updated: 2012-04-09
Packaged: 2017-11-03 08:12:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/379232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fyre/pseuds/Fyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a place where worlds are smashed together like broken glass, you have to make sense of what you can.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Great Puzzle

**Author's Note:**

> This can be blamed on a discussion by Triple Dog Dare and Accio Firewhisky on tumblr, speculating on the awkwardness of family dinners, if August is in fact Baelfire and is older than his stepmother.
> 
> Of course, I couldn't leave well enough alone, could I? Stupid, stupid brain.
> 
> And yes, this is technically _another_ reunion fic, but this time, I let my theorising run wild. The Queen has the hat. August is Bae. Belle was trapped in Wonderland in the perfect inescapable prison.
> 
> ETA on 24/4/12 - THIS IS OFFICIALLY JOSSED. Time for a new theory :)

She’s walking her hands across the mirror again when he gets home.

“Two by two,” she tells him. “Like the ark and the animals.” She turns that strange, cracked smile to him. “Two by two or else it won’t work.”

“What won’t work?” August asks.

“The door,” she says. “You have to open and shut it with two by two or three by three and you can’t just ask it to wait.” She taps her fingers up the mirror, as if she could poke her way through it. “It won’t open.”

He closes the door of the room, and locks it. No one else knows she’s here. Not yet. He’s impressed that Granny didn’t notice him sneaking the girl in two nights before, especially when she started counting the numbers on the doors out loud.

“It’s a mirror,” he says. “You can’t open a mirror.”

Her eyes are wide and blue and staring just a moment too long. “That’s all you know, wordsmith,” she says. She slaps the glass as if it has betrayed her, then flips it on its stand, so she can’t see her reflection. “It lies.”

He walks across the floor to her and gently puts his hands on her shoulders. “How long have you been trying?” he asks.

“There was light,” she says, spreading her hands on the dresser. “Now it’s gone.” She spins to look at him, wild and panicked. “Maybe she’s watching. Maybe that’s why it doesn’t work. If she’s holding the door closed, how are you meant to make it open? She can stop the hat from spinning if she likes. She can!”

“Holding the door?” he asks.

She nods vehemently. “We should keep it covered. Otherwise she’ll see. Always keep the mirrors covered. Hide her eyes and don’t let her peek.” 

August looks at the mirror. “We could put a blanket over it,” he offers, and that seems to calm her. She nods and smiles and for a moment, it looks like she might even have caught onto a shred of sanity. 

“No peeking,” she insists in a whisper. “She always watches through windows and doors and you have to keep them covered so she can’t see.”

August leads her over to sit on the edge of the bed. She’s shaking again, and he wishes that he’d managed to grab some of the anti-psychotics as he bundled her out of the hospital. “Who is she?” he asks, kneeling down in front of her.

She leans down. “The Queen,” she whispers. “Wicked witch. Liar and deceiver.” Her hands are at his cheeks and her fingers are thin and biting into his cheeks. “Never believe the sweet red lips, because all they say is poison.”

He gazes at her, then kneels up and gently draws her against his chest. “The Queen doesn’t have you anymore,” he says. “As long as you keep quiet and secret here, she’ll never get near you again, I promise.”

She’s tiny in his arms. She trembles almost constantly, and he can feel every one of her ribs through the hospital scrubs she refuses to change out of. He only stumbled on her by accident, doing some manual labour work in the hospital to get money for bills. 

He went back in the night, broke in, took her. He doesn’t regret it. But in there, she seemed calm and sane and now, without the padded walls and barred windows, she’s talking of things that anyone else would call nonsense, and she’s breaking his heart with her fear and hope and hate. She knows the truth, he knows it, but her mind is disjointed, as if someone has taken two jigsaw puzzles and mixed them in the same box, then left him to sort through the pieces.

It’s hard enough knowing about both worlds, but when you can’t tell one from the other, he can only imagine how messed up it all must be.

“Can I go home?” she asks in a tiny voice. “Please, my papa must miss me.”

“Do you know where he is?” August asks, tilting his head to look down at her.

Fat tears run down her cheeks. “No,” she whispers. “The world is all wrong. The sea is in the wrong place, and someone moved the mountains. It’s all a jumble and I don’t know where to put my feet.”

“Hey, hey, hey,” he says, sitting down on the edge of the bed and letting her curl into his lap. “It’s okay. Things are changing. There’s someone here who’s working to put it right. It’ll be back soon, and you’ll be fine.”

“You make things up,” she whispers, staring at him. “Your words are made up.”

“I don’t lie,” he says. “I know the world broke, and I know it’ll be back together one day, but right now, I’m here and I’ll help you, okay?”

She stares at him, hard and long. “What do you want, wordsmith? Why are you playing with a broken world?” She reaches up and pulls at his face and he catches her wrists to stop her tearing at his cheeks. “I want to see behind the mask, wordsmith!” she cries. “Don’t hide behind a pretend face!”

“This is my face,” August says, holding her hands between his. “My real face.”

She shakes her head, her hair flying, and she’s crying again, hard and heavy. “No, it’s not. It’s not. It’s a made-up face for a made-up man who tells made-up stories.” She’s shaking so hard she looks like she might break apart. “You’re broken too, like everything here. Why can’t anybody else see?”

He stares at her, then lifts her hands back to his face, pressing her palms flat against the stubble on his cheeks. “I’m real,” he says as steadily as he can. “This is my real face.” She shakes her head, rocking from side to side. “I promise it is. It doesn’t look as old as it should, but it’s my real face. It’s as real as you, as real as both the worlds you’re seeing.”

For a moment, her eyes are clear and almost lucid. “Both. There are more than both. Many, with a thousand doors between them and us. You only get one at a time, wordsmith. This world is broken. Someone smashed two eggs together to try and make one and now, there’s a mess on the carpet.”

He releases her hands and she lowers them to rest on his chest. Her eyes stay on his face as if she can read him like his book. 

“Why are you here, wordsmith?”

“I’m looking for someone,” he says. “Someone I lost.”

“You weren’t looking for me,” she says.

He shakes his head. “No,” he says, “but I found you all the same.”

She looks at him intently, then leans forward and kisses his lips. He doesn’t move, doesn’t breathe. She’s too fragile, too vulnerable, and he knows if he does anything, it could send her running for the closet again. It took him three hours to coax her out of it last time, after he tried to persuade her to change out of her scrubs. 

She draws back, looks at him intently, as if something might have changed, then shakes her head. “All wrong,” she says quietly, getting up. “Doesn’t work. It worked there.” She walks in a circle around the edge of the rug on the floor, then stops and looks at him again. “You’re not him. That’s why it doesn’t work. That’s why your broken-egg-face doesn’t go away.”

He wishes he knew who or what she was talking about, but she never brings in names. “It won’t be long,” he says quietly. “The one who is meant to fix it is already here.”

She sits down on the rug, measuring the distance from the edges with her fingers, to make sure she’s right in the middle. “Can’t clean the carpet. There’s going to be a stain, no matter how you scrub.” She laughs suddenly, sharply. “Stains on silk are the very worst, you know. You have to be very careful or you’ll do more harm than good.”

“You think this person might do damage?” he asks.

Blue eyes fix on him. “Once the eggs are broken, you can’t unbreak them,” she says as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Stick them back together again, and there are still cracks all over.”

She’s right too, but better to have two cracked and whole worlds than one mess of broken ones.

“I’m going to get food,” he says. “Are you hungry?”

She lifts her feet off the rug and uses her hands to rotate herself ninety degrees, facing away from him. “Someone should guard the door in case she looks,” she says severely to the wall in front of her. “If she peeks, then we can put a blanket on her head.”

August rises from the bed with a sigh. He knows he can’t regret freeing the girl from the asylum, but he’s worried that when the worlds forge themselves back as they were, her mind will be stuck somewhere in the middle, as broken there as she is now.

 

____________________________________________

 

The door stays closed.

Sometimes, she turns it back from the wall when he isn’t looking and tries to push her way through. She covers her face with a sheet, so that no one can see her, and presses her hands on the door, the looking glass, the way in and out of her prison.

She does it in secret, when he leaves this new prison but not a prison. The wordsmith knows secrets, and he knows truth, and he doesn’t tell her it all. It makes her head ache and the shimmering edges are sharper and more painful, when he’s there. It’s good pain. It’s a pain that shows her where the edges are. He’s an edge, a beautiful, diamond-sharp edge and she could cut herself open against him.

He knows the secret of the Queen, of the smiles and lips of blood and black eyes like hollow holes in an empty skull. He knows she’s bad, bad, bad, and he knows that if she knew where they were, she would hunt them like a wolf and eat them up.

The room is a prison but not a prison.

She’s not a prisoner. She. Belle. That name rings in her head, rings and rings, like a chime in the wind, and she knows it’s right. But there’s a cover on the Belle, a cover stitched in red letters that calls her Verna. The cover is big and shabby and it doesn’t fit her, like a teacosy on a teacup.

She knows she’s Belle, but sometimes Verna smothers her, chokes her, and she forgets what she is and why she needs to escape. She remembers hands and gold and a red rose that makes her smile, but Verna steals it all from her. Verna wants to keep all the memories for herself, and leave Belle with nothing. 

The wordsmith wants her name, but it’s her secret, kept for the ones who know. 

If he really knew as much as he pretends, she knows he would know. He knows others. He writes. She sees on the page. He knows the names and he writes it all down, all except the names she needs to see. They don’t appear, they never appear, and she wonders if she’s being written out of the world as well. 

He lets her sleep in the bed, but she doesn’t. It’s too soft, strange, like lying on a cloud, so she watches him in the night. There’s something in his face that she knows, but she can’t know because he’s a stranger and has a broken-egg-face that makes no sense. His eyes shine and she has seen them before, but she can’t pull the memory, not like a rabbit from a hat.

The walls don’t hold him, not like they hold her. She walks them when he’s gone, corner to corner, looking for the edges, the gaps where it doesn’t fit. There’s a door made of wood, but there’s a crack made of magic beside it, a real door, and he can’t see it, but she pulls and pulls at it when he’s gone. It’s like the looking glass. It won’t open.

She doesn’t have a hat. She never had. The Queen of Hearts didn’t share with the likes of Belle or even Verna. The Queen chopped and chopped at people, and Belle hid beneath a daisy and pretended she was a mouse. The flowers were traitors, and she had to run had to hide, and never stopped.

There was a Hatter there. He was to make the door open again. She heard the whispers and the stories and looked for him, but she never found him, so he must have been a lie. There were lots of lies in Wonderland, and what made them more terrible was that they pretended to be true to make you trust them, then twisted up and bit you like a wild dog.

So she walks the walls, round and round, until she knows them and knows they aren’t lying and hiding any secrets. There’s a little room beside it, with a basin and that room is cold and quiet and sometimes, she sits in the bathtub and pretends she’s sailing on the lagoon with Papa and there are mermaids giggling and singing. 

She doesn’t add water, not to the tub. She remembers water in the place where they kept her before the wordsmith found her. She remembers hoses and sprays and screams and she doesn’t know which part of it was her. 

The wordsmith doesn’t spray her. He’s kind, even though he hides things behind his face of not-face. He brings her sweet things that are sweet and soft things that are soft, and none of the food tries to trick her into becoming big or small or trapped in a bottle. He tests each piece for her, just to show her it’s safe. 

She dislikes it when he tries to dress her, like she’s a little doll, but she wants to put something on that isn’t from there, something that reminds her what Belle is and makes Verna stop shouting in her head. Verna is loud and demanding and wants to be out and go to parties and get wine. Belle wishes she could put a bag on her head and push her into the closet. She tried once, and the wordsmith found her standing in there, in the dark, because Verna dragged her in too.

The clothes he brings are Verna clothes. She can’t wear them. She won’t wear them. She would rather tear her skin away in pieces than let Verna be in charge. Verna isn’t kind or nice. She’s angry and she hurts Belle’s head, like she’s beating her from the inside. Belle just wants to have some quiet, and make it stop.

Sometimes, she wonders if being Verna would be simpler. She would be in the broken-egg world, but she would be part of it, instead of standing on the eggshells in her bare feet. It hurts, standing on the eggshells, as if they’re made of sharp, sharp glass, when no one else can see them. It would be easier, and she knows Verna would just ignore Belle screaming in her head. Verna doesn’t care about anyone else. 

But she’s Belle.

She whispers it to herself as she edges around the room. It’s her name, it’s who she is, it’s the sound of the end of all things. 

When he comes back, he brings her books, flat, thin picture books, and she wonders what new trickery he has planned. He smiles and it’s real. She can see that. He’s on the edge of real, and she knows he doesn’t lie. He just hides big truths with little ones, and that tastes like treason and cruelty. 

She thinks he will tell her, if she asks him, but her questions get tangled when she thinks them and come out in knots. She tries to speak plainly, but Wonderland took her words and made them into nonsense. No person left in Wonderland ever comes out with a shoeful of sense and a berry full of joy.

“I know I’m a guy,” he says, “so I probably bought the wrong thing.” He opens the flat, thin books. “Pick out something nice, something you’d like. I’ll get it for you, and you can wear it instead of those scrubs.”

She looks at the picture book. Ladies, all shapes and sizes and colours, in pretty clothes that Verna would hate. She stares at them and stares at him, and he smiles and is trying to help her be Belle. She runs her hands over the pictures, lets her fingers taste them like patches of sunshine closed up in paper. They’re right, they’re right, and she can be Belle, and he can help her make Verna stop yelling.

Belle looks up at the wordsmith and smiles and means it. “They will be on the right feet,” she says. “Both of them.”

 

____________________________________________________

 

She’s calmer now.

Once he let her pick out her own outfits, the girl suddenly seemed to come into focus, and she’s calmer. She smiles quietly, and she sits still more often, but he knows she still checks on the mirror, as if she can press through it.

He has no idea who he is, and that’s rare. He knows it upsets her as well. She sits by his side as he writes, searching the words, as if she’s looking for her own name among them. She won’t tell him, and if he asks, she hugs her legs and rocks slowly back and forth as if she’s expecting to get into trouble. 

She likes dresses, pretty and simple ones from the thrift store. Sometimes, with flowers in her hair. Even in the coldest weather, she wears the summer dresses. She likes to twirl on the carpet, just to check that they swirl around her, and when she laughs, he smiles. For a moment, she can look like she’s a happy, normal girl, not a broken mental patient with two realities doing battle for control of her mind. 

Sometimes, he catches her pressing her nose to the window.

“Do you miss outside?” he asks quietly. 

“Clouds and bees all go by,” she says unhappily. She looks over at him, her thin face drawn and pale. “Did you know that grass tickles bare feet on purpose? It’s a very cunning plant.”

“I don’t find that surprising,” he said, setting down his book and coming over to stand beside her. “Did you know clouds change shape to make you guess what they are?” She looks at him, wide-eyed. He points out the window. “There. What’s that?”

“Cumulo-nimbus,” she says, to his surprise.

He tries not to laugh, but she’s so serious that he can’t help it. “I meant what does it look like?”

She frowns as if she can’t understand. “A cloud.”

He shakes his head. “It’s like a game of make-believe,” he says. “I look at that cloud and I think it looks like a turtle with a hat on.” She stares at him as if he’s the one who has escaped from an asylum, and he smiles. “Use your imagination. What could it be?”

She presses her palms to the glass and stares intently. “A dragon,” she says, “all curled with its head up to bite the sky.”

He nods. “Everyone sees different shapes when they look at clouds,” he says. “I think the clouds like to play with us, so they change shape as they go.”

Her blue eyes survey him seriously. “That was made-up.”

He laughs, one side of his mouth turning up. “Maybe a little,” he says. He looks at her and wonder just how long it is since she’s seen daylight. The town has been locked down a long time, and she looks like she has too. “Do you want to go outside?”

She shrinks back from the window nervously. “It’s all cracked and pieced up,” she says, her hands clutched in front of her chest. “I might trip and fall through the gaps and not have a daisy to shelter under.”

“I’ll be there,” he promises. “I can hold onto you and make sure you don’t fall.”

She’s trembling and he crosses the floor the hug her gently. “What if she sees?” she whispered, hiding her face in his chest. “What if she peeps and watches and knows and comes back to throw the key down the well?”

“We should hide you in plain-sight,” he says, stroking her hair. “If we put you in disguise, so no one can see who you really are, no one will be looking for you.”

She lifts her head and looks at him. There’s a stillness in her that he’s never seen before. “I can be Verna,” she says quietly. 

“Verna?” he asks.

She nods and looks as if someone just died. “Verna is the egg-world name and she should not be allowed out to play. She’s a bad, bad person.” She shudders. “It’s only to be pretend, isn’t it? To walk under the sun, Verna can be my made-up face?”

“You don’t need to be anyone you don’t want to be,” he promises. “All make-believe.”

She stares at him and nods. “I want to taste sunshine again,” she says. “Spring is coming and it tastes better than all the other seasons.” She steps back from him. “You have sharps for cutting.” She lifts her braid. “Verna doesn’t have this. It needs to be gone.”

August wonders if it’s such a good idea. “You could just tie it away.”

She shakes her head. “Tied up is still there. She would see and know. If it’s all gone and it looks like Verna is laughing, then it’ll be all right. She won’t come to throw the key. She’ll think she’s winning and let us lose.” She shivers again. “Verna wears pants and shirts with buttons open.”

The clothes he first brought her.

No wonder she threw them at the wall. 

“You don’t need to,” he says softly. “We can go at night when no one is around. No one will care that you aren’t Verna then.”

“Night isn’t full of sunshine and smiles,” she whispers. “It’s always dark in the world and there’s no sunshine. Verna can go in sunshine. She can go and I can hide and wait and pretend and be in the world.”

She looks so desperate to see beyond their little room that he agrees, even though he feels sick with trepidation when she vanishes into the bathroom with his scissors and the clothes she rejected only days earlier.

When she comes out, she looks like almost a different person. The jeans are a little large, and the boots only just fit. Instead of buttoning the shirt, she’s tied it at her midriff, and her long brown curls are all gone, hacked away into a pixie-cut that makes her look like a sprite. It’s only when he looks at her face he can see the terror that’s tangling around her.

“I didn’t recognise you,” he says, getting up from the bed.

“This is Verna,” she whispers through lips that barely move. 

He walks closer to her. “And who are you?” he asks quietly. He knows she needs the definition between one self and the other. He doesn’t envy her, having both worlds vying for attention and control. 

She looks up at him out of wide, brilliantly blue eyes. “I’m Belle.”

 

____________________________________________________

 

The world outside doesn’t hurt as much as she expects. 

It’s broken and she can see it, but it’s not like walking on glass as she feared it would be.

It’s difficult to remember to play act as Verna. Verna is confident, Verna is loud. Verna doesn’t care if she knocks into anyone on the street. She wouldn’t apologise, she wouldn’t even look around if she was Verna, but she’s not Verna, and she’s drunk on the smell of fresh air and the taste of sunshine and the sound of birds.

“How you doing?” The wordsmith is holding her hand, like her promised. He has big hands, warm and only a little bit rough, and it’s like an anchor for her, stopping her blowing away in the breeze like a leaf. 

“It’s like breathing,” she whispers, leaning into him. His sharpness, his thereness makes it easier to take in the breaks and cracks. He stands on the very edge, and he holds her, like a tightrope walker, over the gap. He won’t let her fall, not even a little bit of the way. “Do it without thinking. You think, you stop, like air.”

He smiles at her. “You’ve got some deep thoughts going on there,” he says.

“Thoughts are thoughts,” she replies, looking at the grass and wondering if it will tickle her toes if she lets it. “Deep or shallow, they’re all there.”

He squeezes her hand. “Do you think you can be around people?” he asks. “We could go to the diner. Try some real food instead of something out of a box.”

She looks at him. Belle wouldn’t. Belle is tired and afraid of this world, with machines and noise, and the constant crackle of power in the wires overhead. Belle is tired. Belle wants the quiet of a forest. But she has to be Verna, for a moment, at least in appearance, and Verna would want coffee, whatever that is, and a pastry.

“Try?” she suggests in a small voice.

He takes one of his hands from hers and puts his arm around her shoulder instead, like a shield and guardian protecting her. He can be her daisy, keeping the rain of this strange world off her head. She hesitates, then thinks like Verna and puts her arm around his middle, under his coat, like he’s hers to keep and play with. Verna would chew him up for breakfast.

The diner is covered in cracks. She can see it as she gets near. This is the place where too many stories collide and bounce off one another and splinter the world up a little bit more. This is where the pieces try to fit and it makes her breath come quick and fearful. If this is where they bits are trying to fit, she knows there will be faces she will know and they won’t know her and it makes her chest ache.

“You okay?” The wordsmith looks down at her.

She wants to smile and lie, but she’s trembling to her toes and feels like a butterfly caught under a glass. “This place is wrong,” she whispers. “It’s crushing up like pebbles in a jar, too many in one place.”

“We don’t need to go in,” he says gently. “We can just walk to the store. Get something there.”

Belle swallows down hard. Fear makes you panic. It takes your heart and throws it into a spin, and if you panic, your brain goes slow and you don’t think like you should. She didn’t survive Wonderland without learning to put panic into a box and lock it safe on a shelf so she could scream later. 

“I have to see,” she whispers, and she knows, knows right down to her toes, that this broken, crumpled up piece of their worlds is where she might find what she’s looking for.

It’s not busy, not at all, and that makes it easier. She smiles like she’s happy to be there, and August leads her over to a table. He speaks to a girl, all red and black, and Belle presses her hands on the table top, the false wood smooth under her fingers. It feels real, dull, plain, and she wonders if that’s what it is to be in this real world. 

“Hey,” the girl says and Belle looks up. It feels strange to be spoken to, without threats or spears or heads rolling about her feet. The girl is red and wild, and Belle trembles at the feel of the wild around her. The girl is a danger, good, but a danger.

“Hello,” is all she can say, and even then, it sounds like she took it from a bottle long dried up and scraped clean.

The red girl laughs and walks off. She walks like Verna should, and Belle wonders if she looks as if she’s a false Verna, walking in big sister’s shoes and pretending like she belongs in this world of cars and diners and normal people.

“You’re doing fine,” the wordsmith says, as if he can read her like his books. Maybe he can, maybe it’s written on her face that she’s so scared she wants to hide beneath a sack and never come out again. He takes her hand between both of his, warm and steady, like a rope for her to hold on to so she won’t fall down.

She holds on fast and looks around the diner. There’s a man she knows that she knows. She remembers drinking and sadness and he was smiling, but now, it seems he has taken all the sadness and the drinking and is keeping it to himself. He stares at her like she’s a stranger and she looks away.

“Someone you know?” 

She shakes her head and fixes her eyes on the table. It feels safer. There aren’t many people, but she knows if she sees more and more faces, then it will make Verna want to stand up and be part of them. She’s clawing inside Belle’s head. She wants to talk to the red girl. She wants to put her hand into the back pocket of the wordsmith’s pants. She wants. All she does is want, want, want.

Belle curls her hands into fists and pretends she’s the only one there, like this is her world, and that she doesn’t have to fear the food or hide any time she hears footsteps behind her.

Food is brought to them and the wordsmith has asked for it all to be one big plate between them. He picks up his fork first and takes three bites from different parts of the plate. Safe. He doesn’t shrink or grow or turn inside out. She saw it happen once, a lizard, a cake and suddenly, insides were out and the thought makes her hand start trembling.

“Easy,” he says, squeezing her fingers. “It’s safe.”

“Is it… good?” she asks. She’s not sure what it is. It isn’t like anything from home or the castle or the packets of clear wrap he’s been bringing to her in the room they share. It’s hot and steaming and it smells like real food.

He chews and smiles. “It’s edible.”

She picks at it. She doesn’t eat much. She got used to not-much. You had to be careful of food before and then, she was there and the food was plain and solid and grey, and now, she isn’t sure what food should taste like anymore. It makes her tongue tingle as if it hasn’t tasted anything for years, and she lets each mouthful rest there, making the tingle more and more intense. There’s flavour and it’s enough to make her shiver with pleasure.

Even in this broken little bit of world, it’s good that there’s something that can make her feel like she’s human again.

“Good?” the wordsmith asks, smiling like he already knows.

Belle nods, eating little bites at a time. She made the mistake, early in Wonderland, of eating as much as she could as fast as she could. There are terrible things in a world when you are smaller than the head of a pin, things that are monsters that could swallow you whole. She was swallowed once, and hacked her way out using the sword of the knight who was eaten before her. After that, she crawled under a leaf and didn’t move for three days.

You have to be careful what you eat. Always, even when it looks safe. That’s when it can be the most dangerous.

The wordsmith is sipping a glass of water while she wipes red sauce from her mouth. It looks like she’s bleeding, and she licks the inside of her mouth, just be sure. It’s whole and fine and she wonders if this is what it feels like to be normal in this world.

“Think you could manage a walk?” he asks, watching her.

“Trees,” she whispers. “I want to see trees. Not just little sticks with green tangles or the creepers to tie you up. Trees with leaves and branches and touching the sky with the tips.”

“Sounds good,” he says, and raises his hand to catch the red girl’s eye. 

His hand catches his glass and it falls, bouncing off the chair and crack! Like this place is cracked, the glass hits the floor. He swears and releases Belle’s hand to lean down and pick it up, and she’s breathing hard, her anchor gone, her link snapped and she’s standing on the line with nothing to hold her up.

“Damn,” he says, coming back up from the floor. “It’s chipped.”

Chipped.

She can’t breathe. She can’t think. She can’t. She can’t anything. Anything. Everything. It’s chipped. It’s a chipped cup. Chipped. Like then. Chipped. Not with him. Not her fault. On the floor. Chipped.

She pushes her chair back, and it falls over with a clatter, and the door, the real one, wooden and glass, is opening. It’s a way out, away from the cracks and chipped cups and the man who isn’t him, and everything.

She runs on her tightrope, trying to breathe, like it’s easy, like it’s not a trick, like she’s a real person. 

There’s a man in the doorway and Belle and Verna both run into him. He falls back, she falls back, and she’s shaking and she can’t get out and the wordsmith is behind her, his hands on her shoulders and her world is tilting like the Queen of Hearts’ garden, tilting and skewed and falling away.

“Easy,” the wordsmith breathes with her. “Easy.”

She’s breathing hard, breathing, breathing, in and out, in and out, and the world feels tight and confining and sharp.

The man straightens in the doorway and he has a stick, like the Queen’s head courtier, and it goes tap on the floor. “You should be more careful, dear,” he says, and his voice is that voice, and it’s in her head, and she twists her fingers into her hair and wants to sob. It can’t be here, it can’t be him, and she can’t, can’t, can’t look. 

The wordsmith’s hands are on her shoulders. They’re big and warm and steady.

And another hand touches her arm, and the world comes into focus.

And two voices say her name: “Belle?”

 

________________________________________________

 

August doesn’t like it when his world catches him by surprise.

It doesn’t happen often. He knows pretty much every story of every person in Storybrooke, right down to the man sitting on the chair three paces away from him. That’s a story he knows much better than most. It’s a story that most people in Storybrooke wouldn’t know, even if they could remember who they were. 

The girl, though, is one story he never knew, and that’s what worries him.

The man, Gold, Rumpelstiltskin, his own goddamn father, is sitting there, looking at him like he’s a stranger. A dangerous stranger at that. A stranger who happens to know the crazy girl who happens to know him.

They’ve not said a word to each other from the moment Belle collapsed. She folded up like the world had fallen in on her, and he caught her before she hit the floor. His father’s hand was around her arm, and he didn’t let go. One look told August it would be pointless to even try and persuade him to release her, and that made something horrific twist in August’s gut.

He remembers how terrible Rumpelstiltskin could be in the Enchanted Forest. He remembers the first day his father wasn’t truly his father anymore. The knife was bloody and there were corpses all around their home, which could never really be their home anymore.

If that was the reason for Belle being as broken as she is, he’s not sure if he wants to know anymore.

Mr Gold - he can’t see him as his father, not so cold and distant as he is now and Gold sounds a suitably chilly name for him - has his hands folded on the handle of his cane, and his eyes move from August to the unconscious girl lying on the bed, then back again. 

It’s a calculating look, as if he’s trying to take a measure of what they are to one another, and August is shocked to realise that given the choice, he’ll protect the girl over his father. She needs protecting, especially now, especially if this is something that his father had a hand in, and God knows Rumpelstiltskin made clear time and again that he can take care of himself.

August tries his best to ignore him. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, smoothing Belle’s brow with a dampened washcloth, but she’s still out of it. It was a bad idea taking her outside, but it was as cruel as locking her in a hospital ward, keeping her in the room. Until he dropped the cup, it had all been going fine too.

“You know her,” he says, trying to aim for casual.

“Perhaps,” his father replied neutrally.

August looks at him. “There’s no perhaps about it,” he says wearily. “You know her name. No one knows her name.”

Gold’s lips thin to a narrow line. “You know her name,” he observes.

“Because she gave it to me,” August retorts. “A name is precious. It’s not something that you should just give away.” He hesitates. He remembers a discussion, years ago, about the importance of names, and he wonders if he’s shown his hand.

Gold tilts his head to one side, not much, but enough to be just off-kilter. He was always good at that, after he changed, being just not quite human enough to unsettle anyone he was talking to. “And you,” he says. “Who might you be?”

August wonders how many times Gold has actually ever needed to ask. He can safely bet he would be able to count it on one hand. Rumpelstiltskin knew everybody, and everybody had heard of him. Not the coward, of course never the coward, but the demon and monster, the forger of deals.

“You own this place,” he says. “I’ve got no illusions that you haven’t checked my name in the register already.”

Brown eyes narrow. “A name is one thing,” Gold murmurs, “but as you said, names are… precious, and sometimes, precious things are hidden.” He leans forward, just a little. “I didn’t ask for your name. I asked who you are.”

Clever, August thinks, but all the tricks of subtle intimidation stopped working right about the first time he realised his father was being an idiot. 

“I don’t know what you want here,” he says, “but seeing you is the reason she collapsed. I don’t think your presence is going to help when she comes around.”

Gold’s jaw tightens, his teeth clenched, and his hands close around the cane. August has a feeling that if he even tried to kick his father out, he’ll end up with a concussion. His father wasn’t a violent man, but that darkness twisted up in him sometimes burst out, and people ended up hurt.

“I’m not leaving,” he says quietly. 

“Why?” August asks. Not likely to get an answer, but it has to be asked. He’s sponging Belle’s face, pretending not to look at his father, but even he can’t miss the look that crosses Gold’s face, quick as lightning when he looks at the girl.

“I want to be sure she is quite all right,” Gold says, and August knows without question that he’s serious.

“She’s not,” he says. “She’s anything but all right. From what I know, she’s been locked up for years.” He’s watching for it now, and he sees the flicker in his father’s expression. There’s grief there, pain, expressions he didn’t think his father still was capable of. “What part did you have in this? Why did she faint when she ran into you?”

Gold bares his teeth half-heartedly. “You ask a lot of questions.”

August shrugs. “I’ve been taking care of her for weeks. She never mentioned you.” It’s a low blow and he sees the tiny twitch in Gold’s eye. “I’m just curious why someone she never mentioned, who knows her name, is suddenly so interested in her when no one has given a damn until now.”

Gold’s lips twitch and his nostrils flare, and he’s getting angry. August is impressed he hasn’t flown off the handle already. “It’s… a long story,” he says in a tone that suggests the words are physically painful. “I knew her. I thought she was gone. I was told she had left town some time ago.”

Left town.

That was Storybrooke code for dead.

No wonder both Belle and his father had been so surprised to run into each other.

August can see honesty when it’s written all over his father’s face, and offers, “By the Mayor, by any chance?”

Gold’s eyes widen in genuine shock. He takes a moment to gather his wits. “What makes you think that?” he asks. His hands are twitching convulsively.

August gazes at him, steady, and wonders if he’s reading his father right. This girl was important. He doesn’t know how or when or why or what happened, but she was important enough for the Queen to hide her, and important enough for Rumpelstiltskin to be told that she was lost.

“She strikes me as the type,” he says quietly.

Gold stares at him. “Who _are_ you?” he asks again.

August’s lips turn up wryly at one side. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Try me.”

August wonders if it’s just good luck that Belle stirs at that moment.

 

____________________________________________

 

There’s a soft humming in her ears when she wakes. 

She doesn’t remember going to sleep, but she must have done because she’s in a bed, all fallen down like the silly Princess with the pricked finger. She remembers the taste of food and the smell of sunshine and being in light but there was no spindle, not for her. She wasn’t allowed to touch the spindle, so how is it she fell down and is asleep?

“Belle?”

She opens her eyes and the world is back to where it should be with the walls and the windows and the wordsmith close beside her. His hand is on her cheek, like she’s precious, and she can see the lines on his face that are worry and scared and relieved. His face is a book today and all the words are clear.

“Are you all right?” he asks.

She remembers his hand off hers, the cup falling and cracking like the world around them, and the voice that whispers in her dreams, that screams and moans and lies and tells her she is wrong, but she knows she’s right, even if she can’t remember what she is right about.

She sits up, too quick, and the world tries to throw her back, her head in a whirl of colour and light, and she’s not sure if she saw brown eyes that should have been red or should have been brown if he had let them be. She can’t, can’t remember, and her head, it spins again and the wordsmith catches her, holds her in his arms as she shakes.

“Belle.”

The voice, again, haunting and whispering and chasing and saying her name like a straw in her ear. She wonders if the world is shaking or if it’s only her. The wordsmith’s arms are a wall around her. He’s her towering mushroom now, her citadel, and even if she can hear the voice, she knows that it doesn’t mean it’s real.

The wordsmith’s hand is on the back of her head. It’s like the big leaves she wrapped herself in to keep away the bees. “The gentleman from the diner wanted to be sure you’re okay,” he says. “He’s here.”

Belle’s hands are over the wordsmith’s heart and she can feel him like he’s running, patta-patta-patta. His heart never keeps secrets, honest and hot, and the big truth now is that he’s worried and anxious and maybe even scared. She lifts her head and looks at him. Lines on the face like words in the book. Worried, worried, so so worried. 

He nods towards the chair, the chair she doesn’t touch, too much like a throne, like the Queen of Hearts sat on when she waved her sceptre and guided the axe.

Brown eyes that are brown, that are brown when they should be red, are looking at her and even though they’re not as they should be, and they are everything they should be if she had her way, they’re watching her. They’re scared and dark and watching, and the face is soft like peaches and betrayal. 

She knows him, and she knows he knows her. He knows her like he knows that it’s better than a dungeon, that he’s a trickster, that he’s not all suits and stiffness that she sees in him here. He’s looking at her like she’s real, like she’s not just a chipped cup with a piece of her mind missing and cracked.

Wonderland is a curse, twisting up inside her head, and it takes her words and jumbles then and she says what she remembers. But it’s not his name. It’s what she called him, but it’s not his name. “Coward.”

The brown eyes close, like curtains nailed shut over windows. It hurts him, like broken glass in his skin and splinters under his nails, and that’s not what she meant, not what she wanted, not what she knows his name to be, and it’s on the tip of her tongue, but she can’t grasp it, like a string pulled from her hand.

The wordsmith is breathing sharp, shocked and short. In and out, like she’s said something she shouldn’t know, and she looks at him. He’s shaking too, but she didn’t give him the wrong name, she gave the wrong person the wrong name and now, the world is flip-flapping and all shaking and quaking.

She looks at the peach-faced coward on his throne. He’s still like a statue and his eyes are closed tight and sealed. He’s keeping all upset inside, like a stone in the belly, but she knows, knows, knows he’s cut all over by her words. 

Her words are wrong, and she knows they come out in spits and spots and make nonsense out of sense. Words can’t be trusted. They’re tricky and flighty and turn on the tongue like a splash of water. Words can’t be trusted, but hands can. Hands are honest and true, and she gets off the bed and walks one step, two, to him, and puts her hands on his on his stick.

She gasps as her world narrows, as if she has looked through a magnifying glass, and everything is clear and bright and makes sense.

“Rumpelstiltskin,” she whispers.

She remembers a time, when she fell and curtains ripped, and there was light and his arms, and it’s just like that: the curtains rip from his eyes and he’s looking at her like he did then, and his hands are warm and real under her fingers, and she feels him tremble like he’s scared, like he always was. 

The wordsmith gasps too, like she’s said the magic words. 

“You know him?” he says.

Belle smiles and touches the peach-cheek. Her world is making sense and that doesn’t happen often. But his cheek is peach and her smile fades. If he’s a man again, then he’s not what he was and he has someone who has taken what he was from him, he let someone else take it and not her.

“Belle,” he whispers and catches her hand before she can pull it away. “Dear.”

“Your face is a traitor,” she whispers. “You said no one, and now, there’s someone and you’re not what you were.”

He holds her hand to his cheek, shaking his head again and again. “No, dear, no,” he says. “I didn’t change. This is a mask, this world is a mask. You know. You can see right through it, can’t you, dear? You can see what’s there, can’t you?” He looks at her, desperate and pleading, and still her scared Rumpelstiltskin. “You always could see me.”

She kneels carefully between his feet, pushing his stick aside and leans close to look at him, all peach-faced and brown-eyed. “Wordsmith,” she whispers. “Bring your edge. I need to see him as he is.”

“My edge?” The wordsmith sounds shaky, like his world is tipping up.

“Your hands are an edge,” she says without turning. “Put your hands on me, so I can see the edge better.”

His hands are broad and warm on her shoulder, and the edges glimmer like diamond, and she sees Rumpelstiltskin. He’s glittering and gold and looking at her as if she’s the most precious thing he’s ever seen. This is the face she knows, the face she carried with her like a precious jewel in her hands, when she ran and hid and was lost in the depths of Wonderland. 

He loved her then, she knew it, and she hoped he would realise, but no one can find you if Wonderland takes you, so he never found her when he did realise, and now, she’s chipped like his cup, and he’s peach-faced like a real man, but she knows, knows, knows right down to her toes that he still loves and she does too.

In this world, there’s no true love’s kiss. Their world is too broken too. No curse can be broken in a world that’s shattered and in shards and pieces, and she leans forward and kisses her glittering, golden man. The wordsmith’s hands move off her, but she looks back at him, pleading. She needs to see her Rumpelstiltskin, not this peach-faced man who makes her think of being betrayed with another. 

The wordsmith kneels behind her. His hands are trembling as much as Rumpelstiltskin’s, and she pulls one of his arms around her. He’s her anchor and the man in front of her is her love, and together, they can let her be whole, just for a moment.

 

______________________________________________

 

August wishes he could be anywhere but where he is.

But then, he kind of wishes he could never leave.

He knows this is the most important story that he never knew, the story of what happened to Rumpelstiltskin, the story of what changed to make him care enough to create a curse that turned the world inside out.

He just can’t help feeling kinda weird about watching his father making out with the girl he’s been looking after for weeks. Especially not when his arm is around her middle and she’s just as warm and trembling as she always had been.

Mr Gold is looking at Belle like she’s the most precious thing he’s ever seen, his fingers tracing her cheeks, his eyes wet, and he doesn’t even seem to notice or care that August is right there, as much a part of this as either of them. August wants to pull back, leave them to it, but one of her hands is around his wrist.

“Belle,” he murmurs. “This is between you and him.”

She draws back from Gold enough to look at him. “I can’t see him if you’re not here,” she says in a breath. “Please.”

“Belle, I can’t,” he says, and he knows Gold is coming back from that happy hazy place that Belle’s kiss sent him to. “I shouldn’t see this.”

She looks confused, as if there’s nothing wrong with the fact that she needs a second man to help her see the one she loves. “You said you would help me, wordsmith,” she whispers. “You help me to see him with your edge. I can’t touch him if I can’t see him.”

“Belle,” he tries again, and his voice is breaking. “He’s there. He’s right there.”

She looks at him, wide-eyed and imploring. “Wordsmith, I need you here too.”

He knows he’s probably about to get a cane to his head, but he can’t help leaning down and gently kissing her. He can’t help it. She might not love him or anything even close, but he’s been falling head over heels for his little lunatic ever since he rescued her.

She stares at him, blinking, and Gold’s eyes are narrowed and dangerous.

“Keep that for Verna,” August says, “but I can’t stay, not with you and him.”

“But why?” she asks, as if her request is the most natural thing in the world. “I want you to stay here with us. My edge and my world.”

“Belle, he’s my father.”

Belle puts her head to one side. “Lost you,” she whispers.

“Bae?” His father’s voice is barely a breath.

August drops his head to rest on her shoulder. He can’t be here. He can’t. Not knowing what he knows now. Not knowing that they now know it too. But she’s holding onto him like he’s her lifeline, and he can’t just walk away either. 

The hand that touches his head is trembling, and it’s not Belle’s. “Bae? Son?”

He wants to run, grab his coat, jump on his bike, and be halfway across the state by sundown, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t, because she’s holding onto him and now, he’s holding onto him too. He lifts his head and looks at the face of the man who suddenly looks just like his father, so many years ago, a man who could give a damn.

Belle leans back into him. “Hush, wordsmith, hush,” she whispers, “nothing to fear. Truth known now, truth known.” She looks from him to his father and back, her eyes wide and trusting. “Stay? Safe?”

August looks at his father, who looks back at him, and he knows they’re wearing the same dazed expression. This isn’t the reunion August expected when he finally found him. It’s definitely not a reunion Rumpelstiltskin had ever even imagined he would get. But it comes down to her, Belle. The woman between them is the single most important thing in the world to them both, aside from one another.

“I’ll stay,” he agrees in a whisper and Belle kisses his cheek, lifts her hand from his arm to touch his face. “I’ll help you to see him.”

Her smile could light up the room, and she looks at his father, and then kisses him, again and again, her hands in Gold’s hair. August lowers his eyes. He’ll help her see him, he can’t refuse her that little piece of happiness, but it hurts like hell. 

His father’s hand is on his head again, gently. “Bae,” he says, breaking the kiss. Belle is so close to him that August has been pulled even closer. His father’s eyes are brown and clear and knowing. “You love her,” he says.

August looks at him. “And she loves you.”

Belle’s hands touch them both, August’s arm, his father’s cheek. “My world, my edge,” she whispers. “Need both to see, to walk, to be.” She leans up and kisses August gently, chastely, then his father, equally gently. “Mine.”

August looks at his father, and his father looks back, and he knows without question they would both do anything for the woman in their arms.

 

__________________________________________________

 

For the first time in ever, Belle feels safe.

There are no ogres, no prisons, no guards with axes of spades. There is only the arms around her, one back, one front. Her peach-faced Rumpelstiltskin, whose mask glitters when her worsmith touches her. Her wordsmith. Bay. Not a made-up name. His name. He’s her bay, her haven, he’s safe.

There’s wrongness, she knows, in her conscious mind. A father and a son and a woman shared is something wicked and dreadful and she knows that it may be seen as sin. Sin sin sin. She knows the word. Verna provides it. From a school of Sundays, since is bad and deadly and makes you burn.

But that’s a rule for a world that is whole and real, and this world is broken and the rules don’t apply, and Belle knows she has to have both these men with her, hers, all hers, everything she needs, more than air or food or the scent of sunshine.

There are others words that Verna laughingly whispers in her head. Fucking. Slut. Whoring herself. All wrong and bad words for something Belle knows to be much, much more precious. Verna doesn’t know the meaning of love, but Belle does, and Belle knows it means touching and intimacy and love, even if there are rules being twisted up like dandelion seeds in the wind.

She tastes Rumpelstiltskin’s lips again, and it’s as she remembers, only flavoured with bitterness and sadness and he has tears, and she has too, and Bay, her haven, is trembling, as if he is afraid of what she wants.

She knows what she’s asking. She knows they’re scared that she’s broken and wrong and her head is in knots, but she knows one thing as clear as sunlight through a polished window: they are both hers. That is the only thing she knows she can be sure of in this world. They hold her, and she’s right, as long as they’re there. She’s right and sane and clear-headed and loved.

She unties the knot in her shirt and looks at Rumpelstiltskin. He looks like he wants to eat her all up, and she’s ready to let him. “Please,” she asks quietly. “Please.”

“Belle, you’re not well,” he says.

She kisses him again, kisses and kisses. “I’m well and I’m with you and our Bay is here. Please.” She touches his face, his shoulders, his strange and not-right clothes. “Please, don’t let them world break on me again.”

The wordsmith’s hand touches his father’s shoulder. “Papa,” he says, low and trembling, like a growl of a frightened bear. “She needs this.”

She doesn’t know why he’s afraid. She’s not dangerous or frightening and he doesn’t need to obey the rules in a world that isn’t a world, but his words are for Rumpelstiltskin and not for her, and she looks at red-brown-red-brown eyes longingly. She’s been waiting so long, scared and alone and hollow like a shell, and no matter what Verna sneers and whispers, there’s nothing wrong with being loved.

Rumpelstiltskin’s hand is warm against her cheek, tracing her face like he’s blind and seeing her the only way her can. His eyes are to Bay now, and there are words being said between eyes, words that she can’t see, can’t understand.

Then, Rumpelstiltskin kisses her like he wants to drown in her, and she wants to weep from the joy of it. Her hands are in his hair and it’s cool like water through her fingers, and Bay is tugging her sleeves off one by one, and his mouth is at her shoulder, lips to skin and scorching like the Queen’s firebrand.

Bay’s hand is broad as her belly, and it’s moving up and catching her breath as her chest rises and falls into his palm. His other hand is at her hip, and she trembles as Rumpelstiltskin touches her bare skin like it’s fragile. She’s not made of glass, but he holds her like she is, and there are lips on her throat, a murmur in her ear that she’s beautiful, and she’s crying like it’s the end of the world.

It’s all kindness, it’s all love. There’s nothing wrong or bad or cruel or painful. She feels safe, she feels loved, and they are touching her gently, drawing secret whispers of pleasure from her. She’s not alone, and Rumpelstiltskin is holding her like he never wants to let go and her Bay is holding her like he wants to raise her up to the heavens.

Their hands are all over, and the Verna clothes are a pile on the floor, kicked away and forgotten. She was not Verna, she never was, and they both know she’s her, and she’s loved and it’s terrifying and wonderful and Bay’s hand catches hers and he kisses her fingers, cradles her, and Rumpelstiltskin kisses every part of her right down to her toes.

Rumpelstiltskin has her lips, and Bay has her hands, and the bed is no longer too soft or strange with them beside her. Her hand is under Rumpelstiltskin’s shirt, and she can feel the patter of his heart, like running on flagstones. He’s wanted as long as she has, and he’s mourned and lost, and she’s been stolen and hidden, and the world has let them find each other.

He turns her in his arms, draws her back to him, and she knows he wants to hide his tears, so she draws Bay to her too. Rumpelstiltskin’s hands are smaller, but they seem to find all the places that Bay is too shy to go, and she shivers and let’s Bay drink up the small, trembling sounds that she can’t silence.

Rumpelstiltkin’s lips move down her spine like butterflies alighting, so soft and breathless, and she trembles with longing. She wants to be eaten alive again, but this time, she doesn’t care if there’s no sword or knight to let her escape.

This is all for her, she knows, but she wants it to be for them too. She pushes Bay’s shirt off his shoulders, and he is big and warm and strong, just as Rumpelstiltskin is small and thin and cool. Both parts of both worlds are fixing together for her around them, and she can breathe and feel and sob as they touch her.

They guide her, lead her in this new dance that she doesn’t know, that she never ever had the chance to experience, and Bay is kissing her and his hands are brushing and warm, and Rumpelstiltskin is stroking at her thighs and they’re open like a flower, and he kisses her too, but sweeter kisses that make her whimper and cry and every petal is covered in dew.

Her hand is in Bay’s hair, and the other in Rumpelstiltskin’s, and she feels like a bow drawn and stretched and the arrow must fly. Bay’s cheeks are flushed as he kisses the sounds from her lips, and he doesn’t look, not a glance, anywhere but her, even as Rumpelstiltskin moves and presses and she clings to Bay’s arm as pain and warmth and heat and pleasure become too much.

“We’re here,” Bay whispers to her lips, gentling her breath, so wild and wicked. He draws away, and Rumpelstiltskin’s head bows over her, kisses her gently. 

Belle whimpers again, low and soft, and pain is - for the first time - wonderful. Her fingers slip down Bay’s arm, trembling, and his side, his chest, his heart, down, down to a place she has never been before. He needs to, they all need, and she doesn’t want him to be left in the cold, not like she was.

“Belle,” he whispers, his arm curved under her head, warm and strong, and he tries to stay her hand. “You don’t need to.”

She looks at him, and Rumpelstiltskin’s lips pause at her throat, and she knows he’s waiting, waiting for her to cast one or the other away, but she can’t and she won’t, and they’re hers and her world needs the both.

“Don’t need to,” she whispers in agreement, brushing her fingertips light as rain on his hand, and then down. “Want to.”

She knows she has spoken true, as she wishes, and meaning exactly what she says and Rumpelstiltskin kisses her like she’s a goddess and Bay’s breath catches as she moves her hand, uncertain but true and honest. Her hands never lie, even if her words are a tangle.

She’s between them, between them and warm and loved and not alone, and they’re touching her and holding her and moving against her like she is the heart of their world.

 

 

_________________________________________________

 

Belle’s sleeping.

August isn’t surprised.

She’s sprawled like a sated cat, the sheets draped over her modestly, and her short curls tousled in all directions. More importantly, she’s not twitching and thrashing in the throes of a nightmare. For the first time since he’s known her, she’s sleeping peacefully, untroubled, the furrows in her brow smoothed away, and a small, content smile curling her lips.

He and his father, on the other hand, are very much not sleeping.

They’re sitting in the window-seat, in their underwear, and there’s at least two feet between them, and they’re both watching her sleep and trying to process what the hell just happened for the last hour and a half. 

Rumpelstiltskin silently holds out a hipflask.

August doesn’t want to know where he’s been keeping it, but accepts it and knocks back a mouthful, tasting the familiar tang of whisky. He doesn’t drink often, but after a night like the one he’s just had, he thinks he needs it.

He hands it back and Rumpelstiltskin drinks too.

It’s not as if he wasn’t aware that his father could be sexual. God knows, he had to come from somewhere. And it’s not like it was the end of the world that his father was in love with the woman he may love too. No, that wasn’t it. What he can’t wrap his head around is that she accepted them both, no questions, no fear, nothing of the kind. No. Not accepted. Asked for them both. Not separately. Together. 

There are some things your inner-child never grows out of, and one of those things is the denial of all knowledge of parents and sex in the same thought.

He wonders if his father is feeling the same, only in the other direction.

He wishes he could find words to ask. Words are his trade, and he knows he wants to speak to his father.

After all, they’ve been reunited. They should have a million and one things to say to each other, to explain, to understand. They have stories to tell and adventures to regale. Or they did have, and now, every single thought has been kicked aside by a single small woman and her eager, loving kisses. 

Rumpelstiltskin shakes the flask and offers it to August again, slanting a look at him.

August shakes his head. His head is fuzzy enough without alcohol helping.

It feels like they’re sitting there for hours, when Rumpelstiltskin finally says, “It’s good to see you, son.” 

August can’t help it. There’s something insane about the whole affair, and he’s not just talking about the part of their trio that escaped from the asylum. “This much of me?”

There’s a split-second of stillness, then they both laugh the same disbelieving laugh, as if they can finally acknowledge that yes, the world has gone mad, it happened, she happened, and they’re both still here.

“She always knew what she wanted,” Rumpelstiltskin says, looking at the bed, the girl, their girl. “No one decides her fate but her. Stubborn little minx.”

August can hear the love in his father’s voice, and even if he hadn’t known it before, he knows he believes it now. “Papa,” he begins.

“Her world and her edge, Bae,” his father says without looking at him. “Do you want to be her edge?”

August nods wordlessly. He hesitates, reaches out and touches his father for the first time since he admitted who he was, and his father closes his eyes like he can’t quite believe it. It’s real, and August knows his father is truly there and solid, and the only person he can really tell about anything and everything to do with Belle.

“Papa,” he says quietly. “I think she was in Wonderland.”

Rumpelstiltskin looks at him, his face tight with pain. “I see,” he says quietly. “That explains a lot.” He looks at the bed again, the girl. “How did you find her?”

“Luck,” August replies. He’s beginning to wonder about that. Of all the people he could find locked away, he had to find the one person in the world who loved his father as much as he did. That’s too much of a coincidence. “She was in the hospital.”

“Regina,” his father whispers. “She will burn.”

“What do we do?” August asks. He knows his book is out there, changing things, turning them about, but Belle has suffered enough, and the sooner the curse is done with, the sooner, they can go home, to a real home.

His father looks at him, steady and calm and there’s fury beneath it all like ice. “We keep her safe,” he says. “She must be safe. The rest of the world can fall apart for all I care, but I will _not_ let her be harmed again.”

August smiles. “Looks like we’re on the same page,” he says.


End file.
